Literary Birthday – 27 September – Katie Fforde

If you are prepared to persevere, listen to good advice, recognise bad advice, read a lot and accept it may take many years, you probably will get published, eventually.

My best advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot and write. Don’t worry if you don’t get your first, fifth or tenth novel published, if you keep going you’ll make it. Also read “how to write” books as they may make the process a bit quicker.

What I like most about the stories I write is exploring other lives and professions. It’s a way of having all the jobs I can’t have now. I can also give myself skills I don’t have.

I created the Katie Fforde Bursary because I was a “nearly there” writer for a long time. I found it a bit of a struggle to pay my annual subscription to the Romantic Novelists’ Association so when I finally became published, I wanted to give something back.

Trying to write for Mills and Boon taught me so much about writing. You have to keep the pages turning and not let yourself run down blind alleys. I still irks me that I never managed to bring it off.

Katie Fforde is a British romance novelist. Her latest novel, A French Affair, was published in 2013. She was chairman, and then president of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. In June 2010 she was announced as a patron of the UK’s first National Short Story Week.